Emily Colby > Recent Status Updates

Once again, I really don't like marking books as "currently reading," but this is overdue and I want to come back to it.

I object to tracking what I'm currently reading on Goodreads, but I have to return this to the library and want to be able to pick up where I left off.

This book is so fucking good I'm losing my entire mind

This is blowing my mind. Just finished "Fearing El Sida" by Manuel Betancourt and I'm overwhelmed. I expected to learn from this book about history and queer elders. I am learning that, but it's also leading me to investigate my own relationship to desire and the ways I still bring my Mormon upbringing into my sexual politics. I'm beginning to think this is a must-read for just about everyone.

"If you do something to a patient that you would not do to your friends or children, consider whether you are unwittingly replicating a trauma from the patient's past." YES. I LOVE this idea that you shouldn't treat a patient in a way you wouldn't treat your friends or children (or would want to be treated yourself).

I loooooove We Were There When Jazz Was Invented

"Nothing's worse than saying goodbye. It's alittle like dying."

"Why do you stay in prison / when the door is so wide open?"

"You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself."

Did someone tell the devil we were building Eden? / Or did he slither on the grounds by accident?
- Amit Majmudar, "By Accident"

WHY DIDN'T I SEE IT BEFORE

This is SO GOOD.

"I hope we can rise to the occasion of greatness, where greatness is nothing more than trying to overcome our lesser selves by seeing a young man like Trayvon Martin for what he is: a young man, a boy without a cape, one who couldn't even walk home from the store unharmed, let alone fly."

I love these.

It was as if a morning-glory / had bloomed in her throat / and all that blue / and small pollen / ate into my heart / violent and religious. - The Fury of Guitars and Sopranos

"Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky."

"The only trouble was, Church, even the Catholic Church, didn't take up the whole of your life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to eat three meals a day and have a job and live in the world."

So far I'm not particularly impressed, but I think the interesting part may be just starting.

I WANT EXPLANATIONS

"But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin."

OH MY GOD SJGDJSGJUYDFBDGKFSSGB

"He who is solicitous over the health of his soul has no other course except to see to the health of his community."

Child, / what are you wishing? What pact / are you making? / What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark / can I fill for you when the world goes wild?

"The night is warm. The sky is peppered with stars. I have the crazy desire to cut a piece of the sky to make a dress."

This book is so wonderful.